Three Litre

I heard a rumour on the internet that these days, gigs don’t just happen in places with culture, they also happen in Reading. Tonight’s monthly showcase of local acts at the town’s sweatiest club, the self-proclaimed ‘legendary’ After Dark, features an almost alarmingly strong bill courtesy of local fanzine 'Blah Blah' in which three of the four bands are signed. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s quite an achievement for a place which up until recently lacked any cutting edge bands, and where the musical Hall of Fame currently consists of the Cooper Temple Clause, Morning Runner and that guy from Les Rhythm Digitales.

(l to r: Pete & the Pirates, Off the Radar, Three Litre)

Pete & the Pirates are set the task of opening the night, which they appear to greet with incredible nervousness. Rarely acknowledging the crowd, they unleash a kind of jerking, angular indie with three sets of layered vocals not a million miles from the Futureheads and delivered with the same ramshackle, absent-minded carelessness as The Cribs. Instead of exuding the same hyperactivity though, the Pirates deal mostly in anxiety. Vocalist Tom Sanders smokes nervously and looks to the other band members mid-song, almost as if he doesn’t quite know whether the next words out of his mouth will be the correct ones. Between songs, there is mostly silence. The band members look nervously at the floor or each other, not attempting to engage the crowd and were they not playing like this to London audiences most weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d woken up onstage and had to create the entire set on the spot. Such an awkward display is almost uncomfortable to watch in the same way that Pavement often were, but such acts of social ineptitude are nearly impossible to turn away from.

If the opening acts guitars were jagged, Off The Radar’s guitar sound for tonight is positively serrated, razor-sharp and eardrum splitting from the moment the first chord is hit. If Brian Wilson opened a laboratory, and spliced bits of a young James Dean Bradfield’s DNA into every decent British guitar-pop band circa 1998, Off The Radar may be the result. The three piece create wave after wave of Supergrass-meets-Beach Boys pop-rock complete with backing vocals, the odd harmony and effortlessly catchy choruses. The end result is not a million miles away from Oxford’s criminally under-rated Samurai Seven, but for some reason OTR never quite hit their stride. Maybe it’s that the combination of dirty-sounding bass and abrasive guitar doesn’t quite match their pop stylings, or perhaps it’s because their performance is largely static whilst the music is lively, but something doesn’t quite ignite for Off the Radar tonight. Certainly it has nothing to do with the musical performance; Off the Radar’s three-piece approach to guitar-pop is by far the best performed of all the acts on tonight’s bill, which is why it is so frustrating that the parts quite don’t fall into place.

Three Litre are a different story altogether. “It’s a fine line”, quips Graham Burgess at one point, “as I said to Michael Barrymore that fateful night”, and that says all you need to know about the Three Litre frontman. As humorous and relaxed in delivery as he is sarcastic and verbally deadly, Three Litre gigs were once a regular occurrence before a move to Kent, a marriage and the task of Starting A Family meant that Graham essentially put the Litre on hiatus in the summer of 2005. Despite not having rehearsed since then, or maybe even as a result of it, the Milky Wimpshake/Half Man Half Biscuit-style three minute indie-pop odes tonight sound angrier than originally intended, and each muted distorted note gives way to a screeching wall of feedback. Do you hear that noise? It’s pop music laying waste to your ears. It’s what would have happened if Ian Curtis had realised that the best way to beat life is to take the piss using songs about downhill skiing, Tunbridge Wells and the music industry as his arsenal. Aurally, it’s not harsh - the songs themselves are polished, mid-tempo, calmly delivered and simply arranged - but while the songs lack chaotic energy, the onstage activity does not. Every opportunity to escape the microphone and pummel another solo out of the guitars are taken, and almost as remarkable as seeing the ample-framed drummer mount the speaker stack armed only with a cowbell, is the thought that tonight Three Litre have out-gunned their contemporaries and made it look almost unintentional.

As if following that wouldn’t be hard enough for headliners Coley Park, things seem to be against them from the start. After problems with the kit meant they were delayed in starting their set, it becomes quickly clear that none of the alternative indie-country five can really hear each other. Whilst following your drummer and hoping the rest of the band are doing the same as you is a good way to go, when your bassist is playing the opening song on the wrong fret things just aren’t going to go your way. Signed to Shady Lane records, their set is downbeat, the band themselves fairly static but rather than boredom, the result - when it works - is atmospheric. Imagine the country-prog moments from the Dandy Warhols’ Thirteen Tales of Urban Bohemia, a touch of late 60’s Pink Floyd and add a wistful indie sprinkling of Mercury Rev’s Jon Donahue and you’re almost there, but tonight it just doesn’t work that often. The problem seems to be that the Park are concentrating so hard on getting their act together onstage that they can’t put on the kind of show they would normally like to for the still enthusiastic audience. Picks are dropped, the backing vocals are slightly out of tune, a couple of cues are missed and the atmosphere just isn’t quite right. The crowd are always on their side, but as Coley Park politely decline the calls for an encore you can’t help but feel a little disappointed for them - it’s obvious that they’re capable of so much more given the right time and place.